Self-declared emperor
President Jean-Bedel Bokassa I felt that the title of ‘president’ was beneath his status. He went ahead to crown himself the Emperor of the Central African Republic in 1976. He held a lavish coronation ceremony worth almost a year’s budget for the entire country.
House of Bokassa emblem. Photo: Wiki CC
Financed by the French government, the ceremony was called the ‘event of the century’. Bokassa spared no expense. He wore a 32-pound robe with 7,000 thousand pounds and a diamond-studded crown and sat on a two-tonne gold throne, carved in a shape of an eagle. He also walked on the petals of fresh flowers flown in from France and cut an eight-foot-high cake baked in Nice in France.
Bokassa became the one and only Emperor of the country. He was, however, deposed in 1979.
